You have 20 new messages today! And your heart sinks. It’s not twenty pleasant people who have things in common with you saying hello.

It’s:

Some guy sending you a sleazy message that makes you feel a bit ill
A guy who had seemed pleasant and polite is now suddenly screaming at you out of nowhere
Several people who live 300 miles away and are 20 years older than you
Someone sending you a “clever” chatup line, that is copied and pasted and you have received twenty times before
A weird patronising passive aggressive message putting you down
Somebody sending really pushy messages to get you to act out their weirdly specific fetish- in my case always seems to be men who want to be coffee tables for you

And it’s like your brain has to deal with all those, and you have to block a few more people before you can even think about answering the messages from nice people.

I still remember the gravity of how I imagine it must be when I was talking to a (similarly male) friend about tending to get weird hyper-sexual messages from (blatantly) fake accounts on various sites. We got to wondering about whether there was an equivalent sort of thing that generally happened to women - then realised the obvious fact that “oh yeah, women get bizarre sexual messages (and more of them), but from actual people”. There was a moment of silence on the train journey.

I really don’t get the impetus behind it, even as a rather awkward permanently single guy myself (sadly seemingly the demographic for this kind of baffling stuff)

Blimey! Well, it takes all sorts doesn’t it. You’d feel terrible if you spilt a cup of tea over them though, wouldn’t you? I’ve had a few offers to be dominating, which is odd because my natural expression is one of utter bewilderment.

I had one guy message me, who clearly didn’t recognise me, who was best mates with my ex. Bit awkward and I didn’t really know how to respond so I ignored it. I later got back with the ex and like 8 years later I’ve never mentioned it.

You’d imagine so, wouldn’t you! Maybe it’s the thrill of asking people who aren’t into that?
Good luck! I hope you get a lot less creepy types. Although, apparently you are a magnet to tablemen. Maybe explicitly state that on your profile- I DO NOT WANT TO PUT MY FEET AND/OR ORNAMENTS ON YOU OR YOUR BACK THANKYOUVERYMUCH